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From: dennisg@felix.UUCP (Dennis Griesser)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Computers for users not programmers
Message-ID: <157295@felix.UUCP>
Date: 14 Feb 91 05:51:12 GMT
References: <27A84C5C.24EF@tct.uucp> <13615@lanl.gov> <5934@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
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In article <5934@idunno.Princeton.EDU> subbarao@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Kartik
Subbarao) continues to slug it oug with Jim over the wonders of UNIX.

Jim complained that most of the examples of the power of UNIX are both trivial
and arcane-looking.

Then Kartik defended a script for renaming files from .pas to .p 
>line noise? I really don't think that:
>  % foreach i (*.pas)
>  ? mv $i $i:r.p
>  ? end
>constitutes any more line noise than your inappropriate comments on choice
>of commands.
>
>How would you like to rename files in your favorite operating system?
>Please tell us.

OK.
  rename ?.pas to ?.p

CP-6.  Can be abbreviated all kinds of terse ways, or spelled out to appear
somewhat English-like.

On this issue, UNIX loses.  The best that can be said is that you can hide the
grungy stuff in an alias or a script file in your "bin" directory.  But when
you open up the script, it does look kinda like line noise in there.

< But this is really more of an OS friendliness issue than architecture. >